Any enterprise application must support the needs of your business users by providing a cost effective and user friendly solution. Digital marketing and content services platforms are no exception. As an enterprise grows it deploys many solutions and services to support the underlying business processes and needs. There comes a point in time when you must decide about the future of the underlying technology platform. Should you continue with your current platforms or is it time to consider migration to superior platforms?

Factors that mandate technology platform need analysis

Consolidations and rationalization: Enterprises, as they evolve and grow multiple lines of business, pursue different platforms to support the business. Over time it is difficult to manage proliferation of product/service vendors, environments, and technologies.

Platform limitation and availability of superior platforms: Because of the changing needs of businesses, a platform once useful, is no longer able to support these needs. Technological advances introduce new superior products in the market that can much more effectively address the changing needs of businesses. For example, traditional web content management products are targeted at CIOs. In contrast, the latest digital experience platforms address the needs of CMOs.

End Of Life of the product/Vendor going out of business: In few cases the product is approaching end of life. Some other times, the product vendor shifts focus. New investments for technology refresh or strategic direction for product road map may be missing.

Business models/Long term strategy: Enterprises may veer towards a specific technology stack/landscape/strategy/product vendor. The current platform may not figure in this long term strategy. Also, changing business models — like as a service –- create the need for migration from on-prem to cloud. Similarly the synergy between cloud and product vendors provides an opportunity.

Integrations with other business systems: The need to have a seamless integration with other enterprise systems is also key to reap business benefits. For example, integration with customer relationship management systems (CRM) will greatly enhance the value of digital marketing platforms. If the current systems do not offer scope for seamless integration, then it is time to migrate to newer systems.

So the need analysis plays an important role in understanding the rationale behind content migration. This helps to arrive at the right approach/strategy for migration.

Points of consideration to determine migration strategy for your enterprise

Consumer grade user experience: End users want the same user experience they experience on their personal devices in a corporate environment as well. So ensure the new environment satisfies this need.

Time: Obviously the time it takes to migrate from one system to another plays an important role. As the volume of data grows, typically it takes more time.

Total Cost of Migration: Your TCM is all about the effort, cost of the new software and hardware platforms if any. TCM also includes cost of maintenance and retiring of existing platforms, end user training, and change management.

Regulatory compliance: Compliance for regional laws becomes important. For example, you cannot ignore this in an on-premise environment to cloud or a hybrid migration.

Business continuity: Any migration should result in zero/minimum downtime of systems. With digital experience platforms any such disruption to end user operations could adversely impact the brand equity of an enterprise.

Change Management: Success of your migration strategy and program depends on user education and acceptance. This becomes important especially when the end users may not be IT savvy, like with the users of digital experience platforms.

A combination of above factors should decide whether you can continue with the existing system or migrate to the chosen platform. Based on your business needs, it could be a content services or a digital experience platform.

About Author

Madhava Vemuri

Madhava K Vemuri leads the Technology & Special Initiatives for ECM services at TCS. In this role, he manages the complete technology portfolio and product CoE; he is responsible for strategic relationships with partners, and new service offerings. He has more than two decades of experience in Systems Thinking, Knowledge Management, Program Management, Product Management, Strategic Planning, Technology Management, Business Leadership, and Entrepreneurship. Madhava has a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagapur, India, and an executive Master of Business Administration from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India.